Search This Blog

Showing posts sorted by date for query strike. Sort by relevance Show all posts
Showing posts sorted by date for query strike. Sort by relevance Show all posts

Friday, February 28, 2025

Support the Mission of the University of Oregon (United Academics of the University of Oregon)

Tuition has increased faster than inflation. State funding has increased faster than inflation. Administrator salaries have increased faster than inflation. Yet, the administration is demanding that the teachers, librarians, and researchers who drive the university’s educational mission take real wage cuts. 

While everyone acknowledges the financial challenges facing higher education, the UO is receiving more money per student than ever before. If this money isn’t going toward student education and knowledge creation, where is it going?

The Facts:

Quality Education Requires Investment in Faculty

The value of a University of Oregon degree depends on the quality of its professors, instructors, researchers, and librarians. When faculty wages erode due to artificial austerity, neglect, or slow attrition, it affects not only the quality of education and research, but also the long-term value of a UO degree for students and alumni alike.

  • UO faculty salaries rank near the bottom among our peer institutions in the American Association of Universities (AAU).
  • United Academics has proposed fair wage increases that would merely adjust salaries for inflation and restore them to pre-pandemic budget levels.
  • Despite pandemic-related learning loss, the administration is spending less on education per student (adjusted for inflation) than before COVID-19.
  • The administration has prioritized administrative growth over academic excellence, while faculty have taken on increased workloads since the pandemic.

Faculty Sacrificed to Protect UO—Now It’s Time for Fair Wages

During the pandemic, faculty agreed to potential pay reductions to help UO weather an uncertain financial future. We made sacrifices to ensure the university could continue to serve students. Now, as we bargain our first post-pandemic contract, the administration refuses to offer wage increases that:

  • Cover inflation
  • Acknowledge additional faculty labor since the pandemic
  • Recognize our unwavering commitment to UO’s educational mission

Our Vision for UO: Excellence in Teaching & Research

The University of Oregon’s mission is clear:

“The University of Oregon is a comprehensive public research university committed to exceptional teaching, discovery, and service. We work at a human scale to generate big ideas. As a community of scholars, we help individuals question critically, think logically, reason effectively, communicate clearly, act creatively, and live ethically.”

Our vision for the University of Oregon is one where the educational and research mission are at the fore; an institution of higher learning where we attract and maintain the best researchers and instructors and provide a world class education for the citizens of Oregon and beyond. Yes, this will take a shift in economic priorities, but only back to those before the pandemic. Our demands are neither extravagant nor frivolous. Our demand is that the fiduciaries of the University of Oregon perform their primary fiduciary duty: support the mission of the University of Oregon.

Why This Matters Now

We are currently in state-mandated mediation, a final step before a potential faculty strike. Striking is a last resort—faculty do not want to disrupt student learning. However, the administration’s arguments for austerity do not align with the university’s financial situation or acknowledge the increased faculty labor and inflated economic reality since the pandemic. If the administration does not relent, we may have no choice but to strike.

We Need Your Support

A strong show of support from the UO community—students, parents, alumni, donors, legislators and citizens of Oregon and beyond—can help pressure the administration to do the right thing. 

Sign our Community Support Letter

Sunday, February 23, 2025

HEI Supports Upcoming Boycotts and Strikes

The Higher Education Inquirer (HEI) is in solidarity with nonviolent protests against the Trump administration.  Two upcoming events include a 24-hour boycott of Amazon, Walmart, and Best Buy (February 28th) and a 10-day General Strike. We hope enough people join these and other nonviolent protests to make our messages heard loudly enough. To our readers, if you know of any public protests and other nonviolent acts of civil disobedience that we can highlight, please contact us.  


Related links:

Protests Under Trump 2017-2021 (Pressman, et al, 2022)

Timeline of protests against Donald Trump (Wikipedia)

List of incidents of civil unrest in the United States (Wikipedia)

Methods of Student Nonviolent Resistance (2024) 

Democratic Protests on Campus: Modeling the Better World We Seek (Annelise Orleck)

Elite Universities on Lockdown. Protestors Regroup. (2024)

Monday, February 10, 2025

HEI and the Nature of Work

Wednesday, January 29, 2025

HELU's Wall-to-Wall and Coast-to-Coast Report – January 2025

 



Higher Ed Labor United Banner

January 2025 HELU Chair’s Message

This winter and spring, HELU activists are leading workshops in six states to develop platforms, advance coalitions, and share concrete, tested strategies for winning political change. I hope your union will join these opportunities so we can connect with and fortify each other. At a moment when we could go quiet and dark, we must choose to build up and out.... Read more.
 
Read more from Mia McIver

Solidarity Asks

From the HELU Blog:

Why should healthcare unions join HELU?

Profiteers have taken over our hospitals and put patients’ lives on the line. They are forcing the closure of hospitals that do not make a profit. Insurance companies tell us how and when to treat our patients. The corporatization of both academia and healthcare are ruining the quality of education and health respectively for many of our students and patients. Just as faculty and staff say, “Our working conditions are our students’ learning conditions,” healthcare workers say, “Our working conditions are our patients living or dying conditions.”... Read more.
Quote from Carolyn Kube, HELU Steering Committee: "The corporatization of both academia and healthcare are ruining the quality of education and health respectively for many of our students and patients. Just as faculty and staff say, “Our working conditions are our students’ learning conditions,” healthcare workers say, “Our working conditions are our patients living or dying conditions.” "

United Steelworkers Local 1088 is Newest HELU Member

HELU keeps growing thanks to locals like 1088 who agree with our theory of change and also carry it on their workplaces to build a higher education system that works for all. Our strength and coalitional capacity increases thanks to the engagement of members within their locals carrying our strategic vision and program.... Read more.
 

“Alone our debts are a burden, but together they give us power.”

Debt permeates nearly all aspects of today’s neoliberal higher education landscape. Our students accumulate mountains of debt while studying, and faculty labor under unpayable debt burdens which are particularly burdensome for contingent faculty, who often work multiple jobs so they can make student loan payments. The universities we teach and learn in are drowning in billions of dollars of debt owed to Wall Street.... Read more.
 

The NCSCBHE 2024 Directory: A Boon to Unions, Researchers and Educators

The new 2024 Directory of Bargaining Agents and Contracts in Institutions in Higher Education by William A Herbert, Jacob Apkarian, and Joseph van der Naald is an excellent update of the last 2012 comprehensive directory issued by the National Center for the Study of Collective Bargaining for Higher Education and the Professions... Read more.

Upcoming Events

Defend the University: Lessons from Brazil & Argentina on Resisting Fascist Attacks on Higher Education

Wednesday, January 29 at 8pm ET/7pm CT/6pm MT/5pm PT

Universities in the United States are under conservative and neoliberal attack. The Trump administration has promised to intensify the assault on higher education. In this Jubilee School discussion, leading Argentine and Brazilian scholar-activists that have fought to defend their public universities from the Milei and Bolsonaro regimes will share lessons on how to defend higher education against fascist attacks. Register here.
 
Register for January 29

Coalition for Action in Higher Education: National Day of Action Organizing Call

Friday, January 31 at 2pm ET/1pm CT/Noon MT/11am PT

On April 17, we will hold a National Day of Action for Higher Education to assert our collective power to organize for higher education and protect the common good. Before April, we’ll be hosting a series of national organizing calls to plan the Day of Action events. Our first call is Friday, January 31, at 2pm ET/1pm CT/Noon MT/11am PT. Register here.
 
Register for January 31

Winning Healthcare in Minnesota and New Jersey for Contingent Faculty: Lessons from Oregon and California

Wednesday, February 12 at 6pm ET/5pm CT/4pm MT/3pm PT

On April 17, we will hold a National Day of Action for Higher Education to assert our collective power to organize for higher education and protect the common good. Before April, we’ll be hosting a series of national organizing calls to plan the Day of Action events. Our first call is Friday, January 31, at 2 pm ET/1pm CT/Noon MT/11am PT. Register here.
 
Register for February 12

Coalition for Action in Higher Education: Antisemitism, False Charges of Antisemitism, and Building Resistance Workshop

Thursday, February 20 at 5pm ET/4pm CT/3pm MT/2pm PT

Part of building mutual solidarities, resistance, and narratives to fight false accusations of antisemitism is through widespread political education. PARCEO will share its approach and issues it addresses in its curriculum on antisemitism from a framework of collective liberation, as well as challenges that arise. Register here.
 
Register for February 20

Higher ed labor in the news

Want to support our work? Make a contribution.

We invite you to support HELU's work by making a direct financial contribution. While HELU's main source of income is solidarity pledges from member organizations, these funds from individuals help us to grow capacity as we work to align the higher ed labor movement.
Contribute to HELU
Facebook
Instagram
Twitter
Website
From Helena Worthen and Evan Bowman, Co-Chairs of the HELU Media & Communications Committee.

Wednesday, January 15, 2025

Austerity in California

Ben Unglesbee at Higher Ed Dive this week wrote about the coming budget cuts to the University of California System and the Cal State University System. Something that EdSource, a California-based media outlet, has been reporting on for months.

Those devastating cuts, amounting to $650 million, are part of a long and important history of US higher education and austerity, beginning with Ronald Reagan when he was Governor of California. Those ideas, at least in part, continued under other administrations, as they reduced higher education for working-class citizens, especially African Americans, while giving greater opportunities to foreigners, including elite noncitizens. 

These policies and other regressive actions drove millions of folks out of California. And those policies have spread to other states, making higher education less accessible and less responsive to working-class Americans.  It's no wonder that so many have become cynical about the higher education system.  

For now, the UC System can absorb these funding losses, but the Cal State System and the people who are served by that system, will not be as resilient. On a small scale, this is another symptom of the decline of US democracy and the slow decline of the American Empire, something few folks in higher education will admit, or even discuss.  

Related links:

University of California Academic Workers Strike For Economic Justice

State Universities and the College Meltdown

A People's History of Higher Education in the US 

Higher Education and the American Empire

Monday, January 6, 2025

HEI Resources 2025

[Editor's Note: Please let us know of any additions or corrections.]

Books

  • Alexander, Bryan (2020). Academia Next: The Futures of Higher Education. Johns Hopkins Press.  
  • Alexander, Bryan (2023).  Universities on Fire. Johns Hopkins Press.  
  • Angulo, A. (2016). Diploma Mills: How For-profit Colleges Stiffed Students, Taxpayers, and the American Dream. Johns Hopkins University Press.
  • Apthekar,  Bettina (1966) Big Business and the American University. New Outlook Publishers.  
  • Apthekar, Bettina (1969). Higher education and the student rebellion in the United States, 1960-1969 : a bibliography.
  • Archibald, R. and Feldman, D. (2017). The Road Ahead for America's Colleges & Universities. Oxford University Press.
  • Armstrong, E. and Hamilton, L. (2015). Paying for the Party: How College Maintains Inequality. Harvard University Press.
  • Arum, R. and Roksa, J. (2011). Academically Adrift: Limited Learning on College Campuses. University of Chicago Press. 
  • Baldwin, Davarian (2021). In the Shadow of the Ivory Tower: How Universities Are Plundering Our Cities. Bold Type Books.  
  • Bennett, W. and Wilezol, D. (2013). Is College Worth It?: A Former United States Secretary of Education and a Liberal Arts Graduate Expose the Broken Promise of Higher Education. Thomas Nelson.
  • Berg, I. (1970). "The Great Training Robbery: Education and Jobs." Praeger.
  • Berman, Elizabeth P. (2012). Creating the Market University.  Princeton University Press. 
  • Berry, J. (2005). Reclaiming the Ivory Tower: Organizing Adjuncts to Change Higher Education. Monthly Review Press.
  • Best, J. and Best, E. (2014) The Student Loan Mess: How Good Intentions Created a Trillion-Dollar Problem. Atkinson Family Foundation.
  • Bledstein, Burton J. (1976). The Culture of Professionalism: The Middle Class and the Development of Higher Education in America. Norton.
  • Bogue, E. Grady and Aper, Jeffrey.  (2000). Exploring the Heritage of American Higher Education: The Evolution of Philosophy and Policy. 
  • Bok, D. (2003). Universities in the Marketplace : The Commercialization of Higher Education.  Princeton University Press. 
  • Bousquet, M. (2008). How the University Works: Higher Education and the Low Wage Nation. NYU Press.
  • Brennan, J & Magness, P. (2019). Cracks in the Ivory Tower. Oxford University Press. 
  • Brint, S., & Karabel, J. The Diverted Dream: Community colleges and the promise of educational opportunity in America, 1900–1985. Oxford University Press. (1989).
  • Cabrera, Nolan L. (2024) Whiteness in the Ivory Tower: Why Don't We Notice the White Students Sitting Together in the Quad? Teachers College Press.
  • Cabrera, Nolan L. (2018). White Guys on Campus: Racism, White Immunity, and the Myth of "Post-Racial" Higher Education. Rutgers University Press.
  • Caplan, B. (2018). The Case Against Education: Why the Education System Is a Waste of Time and Money. Princeton University Press.
  • Cappelli, P. (2015). Will College Pay Off?: A Guide to the Most Important Financial Decision You'll Ever Make. Public Affairs.
  • Carney, Cary Michael (1999). Native American Higher Education in the United States. Transaction.
  • Childress, H. (2019). The Adjunct Underclass: How America's Colleges Betrayed Their Faculty, Their Students, and Their Mission University of Chicago Press.
  • Cohen, Arthur M. (1998). The Shaping of American Higher Education: Emergence and Growth of the Contemporary System. San Francisco: Jossey-Bass.
  • Collins, Randall. (1979/2019) The Credential Society. Academic Press. Columbia University Press. 
  • Cottom, T. (2016). Lower Ed: How For-profit Colleges Deepen Inequality in America
  • Domhoff, G. William (2021). Who Rules America? 8th Edition. Routledge.
  • Donoghue, F. (2008). The Last Professors: The Corporate University and the Fate of the Humanities.
  • Dorn, Charles. (2017) For the Common Good: A New History of Higher Education in America Cornell University Press.
  • Eaton, Charlie.  (2022) Bankers in the Ivory Tower: The Troubling Rise of Financiers in US Higher Education. University of Chicago Press.
  • Eisenmann, Linda. (2006) Higher Education for Women in Postwar America, 1945–1965. Johns Hopkins U. Press.
  • Espenshade, T., Walton Radford, A.(2009). No Longer Separate, Not Yet Equal: Race and Class in Elite College Admission and Campus Life. Princeton University Press.
  • Faragher, John Mack and Howe, Florence, ed. (1988). Women and Higher Education in American History. Norton.
  • Farber, Jerry (1972).  The University of Tomorrowland.  Pocket Books. 
  • Freeman, Richard B. (1976). The Overeducated American. Academic Press.
  • Gaston, P. (2014). Higher Education Accreditation. Stylus.
  • Ginsberg, B. (2013). The Fall of the Faculty: The Rise of the All Administrative University and Why It Matters
  • Gleason, Philip. Contending with Modernity: Catholic Higher Education in the Twentieth Century. Oxford U. Press, 1995.
  • Golden, D. (2006). The Price of Admission: How America's Ruling Class Buys its Way into Elite Colleges — and Who Gets Left Outside the Gates.
  • Goldrick-Rab, S. (2016). Paying the Price: College Costs, Financial Aid, and the Betrayal of the American Dream.
  • Graeber, David (2018) Bullshit Jobs: A Theory. Simon and Schuster. 
  • Groeger, Cristina Viviana (2021). The Education Trap: Schools and the Remaking of Inequality in Boston. Harvard Press.
  • Hamilton, Laura T. and Kelly Nielson (2021) Broke: The Racial Consequences of Underfunding Public Universities
  • Hampel, Robert L. (2017). Fast and Curious: A History of Shortcuts in American Education. Rowman & Littlefield.
  • Johnson, B. et al. (2003). Steal This University: The Rise of the Corporate University and the Academic Labor Movement
  • Keats, John (1965) The Sheepskin Psychosis. Lippincott.
  • Kelchen, R. (2018). Higher Education Accountability. Johns Hopkins University Press.
  • Kezar, A., DePaola, T, and Scott, D. The Gig Academy: Mapping Labor in the Neoliberal University. Johns Hopkins Press. 
  • Kinser, K. (2006). From Main Street to Wall Street: The Transformation of For-profit Higher Education
  • Kozol, Jonathan (2006). The Shame of the Nation: The Restoration of Apartheid Schooling in America. Crown. 
  • Kozol, Jonathan (1992). Savage Inequalities: Children in America's Schools. Harper Perennial.
  • Labaree, David F. (2017). A Perfect Mess: The Unlikely Ascendancy of American Higher Education. Chicago: University of Chicago Press.
  • Labaree, David (1997) How to Succeed in School without Really Learning: The Credentials Race in American Education, Yale University Press.
  • Lafer, Gordon (2004). The Job Training Charade. Cornell University Press.  
  • Loehen, James (1995). Lies My Teacher Told Me. The New Press. 
  • Lohse, Andrew (2014).  Confessions of an Ivy League Frat Boy: A Memoir.  Thomas Dunne Books. 
  • Lucas, C.J. American higher education: A history. (1994).
  • Lukianoff, Greg and Jonathan Haidt (2018). The Coddling of the American Mind: How Good Intentions and Bad Ideas Are Setting Up a Generation for Failure. Penguin Press.
  • Maire, Quentin (2021). Credential Market. Springer.
  • Mandery, Evan (2022) . Poison Ivy: How Elite Colleges Divide Us. New Press. 
  • Marti, Eduardo (2016). America's Broken Promise: Bridging the Community College Achievement Gap. Excelsior College Press. 
  • Mettler, Suzanne 'Degrees of Inequality: How the Politics of Higher Education Sabotaged the American Dream. Basic Books. (2014)
  • Newfeld, C. (2011). Unmaking the Public University.
  • Newfeld, C. (2016). The Great Mistake: How We Wrecked Public Universities and How We Can Fix Them.
  • Paulsen, M. and J.C. Smart (2001). The Finance of Higher Education: Theory, Research, Policy & Practice.  Agathon Press. 
  • Rosen, A.S. (2011). Change.edu. Kaplan Publishing. 
  • Reynolds, G. (2012). The Higher Education Bubble. Encounter Books.
  • Roth, G. (2019) The Educated Underclass: Students and the Promise of Social Mobility. Pluto Press
  • Ruben, Julie. The Making of the Modern University: Intellectual Transformation and the Marginalization of Morality. University Of Chicago Press. (1996).
  • Rudolph, F. (1991) The American College and University: A History.
  • Rushdoony, R. (1972). The Messianic Character of American Education. The Craig Press.
  • Selingo, J. (2013). College Unbound: The Future of Higher Education and What It Means for Students.
  • Shelton, Jon (2023). The Education Myth: How Human Capital Trumped Social Democracy. Cornell University Press. 
  • Simpson, Christopher (1999). Universities and Empire: Money and Politics in the Social Sciences During the Cold War. New Press.
  • Sinclair, U. (1923). The Goose-Step: A Study of American Education.
  • Stein, Sharon (2022). Unsettling the University: Confronting the Colonial Foundations of US Higher Education, Johns Hopkins Press. 
  • Stevens, Mitchell L. (2009). Creating a Class: College Admissions and the Education of Elites. Harvard University Press. 
  • Stodghill, R. (2015). Where Everybody Looks Like Me: At the Crossroads of America's Black Colleges and Culture. 
  • Tamanaha, B. (2012). Failing Law Schools. The University of Chicago Press. 
  • Tatum, Beverly (1997). Why Are All the Black Kids Sitting Together in the Cafeteria. Basic Books
  • Taylor, Barret J. and Brendan Cantwell (2019). Unequal Higher Education: Wealth, Status and Student Opportunity. Rutgers University Press.
  • Thelin, John R. (2019) A History of American Higher Education. Johns Hopkins U. Press.
  • Tolley, K. (2018). Professors in the Gig Economy: Unionizing Adjunct Faculty in America. Johns Hopkins University Press.
  • Twitchell, James B. (2005). Branded Nation: The Marketing of Megachurch, College Inc., and Museumworld. Simon and Schuster.
  • Vedder, R. (2004). Going Broke By Degree: Why College Costs Too Much.
  • Veysey Lawrence R. (1965).The emergence of the American university.
  • Washburn, J. (2006). University Inc.: The Corporate Corruption of Higher Education
  • Washington, Harriet A. (2008). Medical Apartheid: The Dark History of Medical Experimentation on Black Americans from Colonial Times to the Present. Anchor. 
  • Whitman, David (2021). The Profits of Failure: For-Profit Colleges and the Closing of the Conservative Mind. Cypress House.
  • Wilder, C.D. (2013). Ebony and Ivy: Race, Slavery, and the Troubled History of America's Universities. 
  • Winks, Robin (1996). Cloak and Gown:Scholars in the Secret War, 1939-1961. Yale University Press.
  • Woodson, Carter D. (1933). The Mis-Education of the Negro.  
  • Zaloom, Caitlin (2019).  Indebted: How Families Make College Work at Any Cost. Princeton University Press. 
  • Zemsky, Robert, Susan Shaman, and Susan Campbell Baldridge (2020). The College Stress Test:Tracking Institutional Futures across a Crowded Market. Johns Hopkins University Press. 

 

Activists, Coalitions, Innovators, and Alternative Voices

 College Choice and Career Planning Tools

Innovation and Reform

Higher Education Policy

Data Sources

Trade publications